13. Scream 3 (2000, Wes Craven)
By Eivind Langdal
6th October 2009

…includes spoilers

They say that the key to liking a movie is lowering your expectations. I don’t know about that. It seems too easy, as if your mental state can somehow turn a bad film into a good one. I didn’t have a lot of expectations for Scream 3. Think it helped? I’ll spoil the surprise: it didn’t. This is an unfitting end to what could actually have been the defining horror trilogy. Perhaps it was inevitable. Perhaps even the Scream series couldn’t go on for a very long before eventually succumbing to the inevitable rule that no third film in a series can ever be as good as the first (or even the second).

But perhaps the point was to create a bad film on purpose. Maybe it lampoons bad horror sequels by being one itself? Yeah, maybe that is the case. The only problem is: if you think a bad film being aware of itself being bad makes it good, you’re forgetting that you still have a bad movie. Not that the makers of the Scream series are particularly interested in making clever slasher films anymore. Instead they’ve figured they just wanted to make slasher films, and if there’s one thing I know about slasher films, it’s that you have to put an effort into making them clever. They rarely do that by themselves.

So, here’s what happens: the characters have been separated (yes, again). Sidney is living up in the mountains under a false name. She works as hotline crisis telephone operator, which, admittedly, is kinda the perfect job if you don’t want to meet people face to face. Of course, it doesn’t take long before things start to happen, and before you can say “Wes Craven has some odd initials”, the masked killer has returned and terror begins anew.

What really frustrates me most about the series is the relationship between Gale and Dewey. Not because I don’t like it. On the contrary, I find them to be a sweet pair. However, why do they always have to start the movie as a separated couple? It’s pretty clear they’re meant to be together, so why try to milk some “will-they-won’t-they” suspense by thinking the audience doesn’t know how it will all be resolved between the two of them? I wish I could tell you, but I can’t.

The film comes near to making the series feel alive by reintroducing Randy the movie geek in a hilarious cameo. As I said in the review of the second film, Randy is the series’ most interesting character, so it’s no wonder he was semi-resurrected for the third film as well. Sure, it’s a lazy plot device (wanting to kill him and then later still use him as a character could pretty much be in the dictionary as “having one’s cake and eating it too”), but the new rules given by Randy promises something that could be interesting.

And then the film doesn’t deliver on them. When Randy says that basically anything can happen, including the heroine dying, is it really just a trick from the filmmakers where we are supposed to be certain Sidney isn’t going to make out? That seems reasonable, but at the same time, when Sidney is shot twice and then reappears seconds later, still sane and well, one can’t help but wonder if the filmmakers simply have run out of ideas. Speaking of running out of ideas, what’s up with her turning out to be wearing a bulletproof vest? That’s the second laziest deus ex machina in Hollywood, man! Want to know what the laziest is? Two characters turning out to be wearing bulletproof vests, which actually happens in this film.

Look, I’m not saying Sidney should have died. Neither should Gale or Dewey. In fact, one of the few positive points about the film is how it expands on the universe of the series. Usually, I avoid sequels altogether because I really don’t know what the point is to even check them out, but when I, in a rare occurrence, do see one, I am reminded that sometimes, it’s nice seeing the characters from the original again.

Oh yes, the characters. The Scream series always did characters so well. Usually, what you remember about horror films are either the villains or certain scary scenes, but here we get to know actual human beings with lives of their own. They exist for more reasons than being potential victims for a mad killer. It is unfortunate that this isn’t the case in more horror films. I mean, think about it, the scary scenes in the Scream films were never as clever as the scenes referencing other horror films, but they still worked. One of the reasons they did, was because of great characters. If you care for someone, it’ll hurt more to see him or her in pain then if you didn’t.

Still, no matter how great the characters are, Scream 3 is not a very good film. The storyline, about a killer killing off actors in the film “Stab 3” (which apparently no longer stars Tori Spelling) in the order their characters die in the screenplay, is gimmicky at best, even more so because the film doesn’t even seems to care much for it. It jumps between awkwardly stagy scenes between Gale and Dale, and a few sequences of Sidney having flashbacks to her mother for some reason. Then, occasionally, there is the obligatory chase scene. Eventually, it all reaches a reveal that I didn’t expect. It’s not the most groundbreaking twist in the genre (if you can even call it a twist), but it works. Still, I’m not so sure about that Hallmark-like ending. It was much more fun when the characters predicted the killer coming back for “one last scare”. What happened to that kind of writing? Did a ghost-faced killer slash it and kill it?

I’ll get my coat.